There’s No Place Like Home

Denpasar Government Declares an End to Transmigration Programs for Capital Citizens

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(11/16/2012)

Suarapembaruan.com reports that effective immediately the municipal government of Bali’s capital city of Denpasar will no longer allow its residents to participate in transmigration programs organized by the central government.

Instead, Denpasar has decided to create empowerment programs for its poorer citizens. The chief of the Manpower, Transmigration and Social Department for Denpasar, I Made Erwin Suryadarma Sena, told the press on Wednesday, November 14, 2012: “Stopping the transmigration program for Denpasar residents is not solely because of various incidents involving transmigrants, such as South Lampung.

Erwin said that halting the transmigration program for Denpasar was more closley linked to a desire to improve the welfare of the capital’s citizens by providing training in a number of areas that will increase family incomes than events unfolding in South Sumatra.

“We are doing this in accordance with the wishes of the Mayor of Denpsar who has ordered that various departments of the administration – such as the Body for Empowering the Public; Manpower, Transmigration and Social Department; the Department of Health; Directorate of Sports, the Regional Planning Agency; the Department of Industry and Trade; Cooperatives; and Small Business Enterprises – all implement training that will empower the public,” said Erwin.

In the Department of Manpower, Transmigration and Social, explained Erwin, simultaneous steps are underway to help job seekers obtain positions abroad or on cruise ships. People from the lower economic classes are being provided with training to find jobs on cruise ships and, in so doing, provide higher family incomes and reduce the need or desire to transmigrate.

Erwin said job training is also being given to civil servant pensioners.
The last group of citizens from Denpasar to transmigrate was comprised of 10 family heads who left for Bone, Sulawesi in 2011.